


piece together these parts

by ArtsyAfrodite



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Gallavich, Issues with Expressing Emotion, Love, M/M, Relationship(s), Season 5 Headcanon, the dugout scene, this is my headcanon with extra thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:23:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2823269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyAfrodite/pseuds/ArtsyAfrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The words were so loud in Mickey’s head every single time, always pricking the tip of his tongue, but he could never spit them out despite the stinging need to do so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	piece together these parts

**Author's Note:**

> So this is something I wrote to help with the writer's block I'm experiencing with my WIP's. It started with my headcanon of the dugout scene spoiler from Season 5, but kind of turned into something else.

He wakes up to the same dream he’s been having for months now.  His heart is pounding, the image of his mother’s lifeless body still strong behind his eyes when he closes them as he catches his breath.  It’s been years since he’d had these.  Mickey rubs both of his hands down his sweat-stained face, tries to steady his breathing, but fails miserably.  His chest hurts the way it did when he was eleven.

He looks down at Ian in the bed next to him, still asleep.  So much shit they’ve been dealing with lately.  There’s no way he’s going to bother him with this.  It’s still early, just after 7am, the sun just starting to bleed through the bedroom curtains.  He gently brushes his fingers through Ian’s hair, taking in the way the red strands sweep between his fingers, before turning to place his feet on the cold floor.  He’s not going back to sleep now.

There’s always that minute where Mickey feels strong, a single minute, like he’s got a handle on things.  Then the dreams come again, making him feel just as weak as his father always told him he would be if this were to ever happen.

_“Who the fuck told you it was okay to cry?”_

_Just like that, he cuts the tears off, his breath almost going with them.  An eleven year old Mickey wipes his eyes, trying his best to keep his pain at bay.  He sucks in a small amount of air, any ounce of emotion traveling straight to his lungs where he intends to keep it.  It hurts.  He’s holding his breath, the look on Terry’s face warning him his next one could very well be his last._

_“You hear what I said?!” Terry screams, inches from his youngest son’s face.  His blue eyes are wide, almost bone dry now from not blinking._

_“N-no one,” Mickey manages to say.  His voice is shaky, but at least he’s breathing now.  He regrets shedding a single tear over his mother’s death.  But all he could see at her funeral was her body, limp and lifeless as it hung off of the couch.  She looked like the ragdoll she’d given Mandy a year ago.  Mickey tightens his jaw, feeling the tears starting to build behind his eyes again.  Before he can take in another breath to try and gather himself, a stinging sensation travels across his face.  Terry’s backhanded him._

_“You cut that shit out right now!” Terry continues to yell.  “Toughen up, you hear me?!  Do you see me cryin’?  I’m raising men, not pansies.  She’s gone now and cryin’ ain’t gonna bring her back.”  Mickey wishes he was smart like Mandy, hiding himself away in his room to cry silently into his pillow.  He wasn’t strong like his brothers, their faces just as hard and stoic like their father’s.  “Besides, feelings make you weak and gettin’ attached to someone gets you nothin’ in life.  Love gets you jack shit.  They just end up in the dirt like your mother.”_

_Mickey’s face hurts more than his lungs now, but he steels himself.  From that day forth, he builds a stone wall around his heart, just like father taught him.  But that doesn’t stop the dreams from coming._

_Until Ian Gallagher comes along.  Then just for a while, before he realizes or admits what’s happening, the dreams fade._

Mickey looks over his shoulder at Ian one last time, before getting up.  He quickly gets dressed, makes sure not to wake Svetlana, Nika and Yevgeny as he makes his way into the living room.  He grabs his jacket and a pair of cigarettes, before heading out the door to go to the one place he knows he can feel like himself again.  Where he can feel strong.

Even if for just one minute.

////

“I’ve been looking for you.”

Mickey opens his eyes and looks up, those green eyes he knows all too well staring down at him.  He’s been lying in the grass of the baseball field for the past hour, his back now slightly wet from the morning dew.  Ian’s smiling at him, the look on his face making Mickey’s heart stop for just a second.  It does every time he looks at him like that.

“Congratulations.  You found me,” Mickey responds as he props himself up on his elbows.

“Why are you lying in the middle of the field?” Ian asks as he cocks his head to the side as if studying him.

“Couldn’t sleep and decided to get some air.”

“Without bringing me with you?”

“You looked peaceful,” Mickey says as he takes out a cigarette and lights it, “didn’t wanna wake you.”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Ian says as he sits in the grass next to his boyfriend, plucking the cigarette from between his lips.  He ignores the frown on Mickey’s face and takes a few puffs before handing the cigarette back.  He’s supposed to be quitting for the second time.  “Missed you this morning.  You know I hate waking up alone.”

“You’ll live,” Mickey says sarcastically.  It earns him the chin from Ian, but all he does is wiggles his eyebrows in response.  He brings his hand up to take another puff from the nicotine, but before he can do so, Ian grabs it and tosses it to the side before straddling him.  He grabs Mickey’s wrists, causing him to land back flat on his back, and pins them above his head. 

“You’re a real smartass, you know that?” Ian says, a wicked grin on his face.

“You know you love it.”

“I love you,” Ian blurts out.  Mickey feels himself stiffen underneath Ian’s grip, and suddenly everything around him goes quiet.  He’s known for years how Ian feels about him, but it’s the first time he’s said it out loud, and Mickey finds himself struggling to say it back.  He can’t.  The feeling is crippling and suddenly everything comes to a crashing halt.

_You can only go as fast as the traffic in front of you allows._

It’s a sudden thought, Mickey convincing himself it’s his nerves and the way they tend to wreak havoc on the parts of his brain that somehow make him emotional.  Pensive.  Wheels turning, turning.  He’s always found thinking rather tedious, but now that there’s love involved, it’s almost painful – life changing down to the bone.  There’s no doubt he feels the same, the way his very insides morph with each thought of Ian and the way his eyes are lackluster the first hour after he takes his meds.  Or the way he sometimes loses his appetite when he’s not feeling well.  He worries so much about him now.  It comes with the territory.

Still, despite all of that, he struggles to say it back.  Mickey closes his eyes, and suddenly he sees his mother.

Ian smiles as he lifts off of him, seemingly unfazed by him not saying it back and that makes Mickey feel even worse.  He’s inside of himself now, quietly admonishing any outward show of emotion, in any shape or fashion, whilst wondering what he’s so afraid of.  But it’s hard because of thoughts of traffic and countless miles – the long, tumultuous road it took for him and Ian to even get this far.  It shoudn’t have taken so long for this, but the road was certainly one that was filled with congestion and more accidents than they both dared to count.  Most of the time it was them speeding in opposite directions crashing into each other, or Terry threatening to run them over.

But Terry’s gone now.

“Ian,” Mickey finally manages to breathe out.  He didn’t realize he was holding his breath.

“It’s okay Mick,” Ian says before Mickey can get the rest of his words out.  “You don’t have to say it back.  I caught myself off guard too by saying it.”  His voice is steady, but Mickey can tell by the way the glimmer in his eyes faded slightly, that he’s hurt, even if only a little bit.  He wasn’t built for moments like this and tells himself Ian deserves more.

Ian makes his way towards the fence separating the benches from the field, the sun making the dugout look almost ethereal.  For Mickey, this moment is ironic, because this would have been the perfect place to finally say it, the atmosphere just _right_.  He blinks his eyes a few times before looking upward.  He takes a few moments before gathering himself and walking over towards the dugout to join Ian.  As he walks, he remembers the way Ian’s face used to light up here whenever they would spend summer nights here too hot for skin-to skin contact, not caring how sticky they’d get when fooling around.  There were also the winter nights too cold not to touch, the heat between them the only thing managing to keep them warm.

It reminds him of how they would be Southside teenagers together, losing track of time while ultimately finding each other.  These were indelible memories that would survive anything that tried to ruin them, time after time.

“What’s going on in there?” Ian asks as he studies the way the line in the middle of Mickey’s forehead deepens when he finally makes his way into the dugout.

“What isn’t?” Mickey responds as they stand behind the fence.  He stares out at the baseball patch, looping his fingers through the cold metal of the fence and grips.  He needs something solid to hold on to while he inwardly scolds himself for being such a pussy.  But this is a trend.

He then feels himself tense up as he thinks of Ian a month ago, his eyes sunken and almost empty.  The slight pink in his cheeks had faded, matching the pale walls of the hospital, his freckles swallowed by the sallow color.  He really should have told him then, but visiting was hard enough.  It was like he wasn’t there half the time anyway, the look in his eyes distant and frightening – like he didn’t know him, like he’d forgotten what they were.  _Together_.  The words were so loud in Mickey’s head every single time, always pricking the tip of his tongue, but he could never spit them out despite the stinging need to do so. 

He was so close once.  Ian had gripped his hand just when he thought he would get no response out of him.  His green eyes twinkled for just a second as a small smile poked as his mouth.  He squeezed, letting Mickey know how he felt in a single touch – that he hadn’t forgotten.  Fiona was there with him that particular day and cried as soon as she saw their hands connect.  Mickey remained as still as the moment, showing no emotion on the outside, holding himself together despite falling apart inside.  He spent the night at the Gallagher house that night, keeping Fiona company as she sat teary-eyed at the kitchen table, his own eyes still dry.

He’d finally broken down when he was alone later that night in Ian’s bed, gripping the sheets tight as he brought them to his face, Ian’s scent heavy in the fabric.  He cursed at himself for missing his chance – for once again, being afraid.  While he slept he dreamt of Terry’s hand across his face and his mother’s lifeless body.

Mickey feels Ian’s arms wrap around his waist from behind, snapping him out of his thoughts.  “A penny for ‘em?” he asks close to his ear.

He loosens his grip on the fence and turns to meet Ian’s eyes.  “I’m…Ian I’m…fuck!” Mickey yells out of frustration.  “Shit, I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” Ian asks as he quickly brushes his fingers through Mickey’s hair.  It’s his thing now, something new he admits he enjoys.  He flinched the first couple of times Ian did it when he came home, but he doesn’t anymore.  He stopped running from the intimacy his boyfriend so readily and easily gives.  Mickey receives it even easier now.  If only his words could come out the same way.

“For not saying it back.”

“Mick I told you, its fine,” Ian assures him.  But Mickey’s not buying it.  Ian quickly picks up on his boyfriend’s frustration, and pulls him in closer.  “You know, I’d much rather be at home tangled up in you right now instead of watching you frown.”

Mickey smiles at the thought of being trapped by long, freckled limbs, their legs almost tied around each other.  But he feels his smile fade as he once again struggles with his words.  “Just wanted the first time either one of us said it to be just right,” Mickey offers, “and this would have been the perfect place.”

Ian smiles and pulls away as he sits on one of the benches.  “Since when has anything with us ever been perfect?”

He’s right – they were perfectly imperfect.

Mickey chews the inside of his cheek briefly, those same nerves that plagued him whenever he visited Ian filling his mouth instead of words.  He manages to swallow them before he loses his tongue in them.  He makes his way over to Ian and plants himself next to him, his eyes focusing back on the baseball patch.  It feels like just yesterday when Ian took him just feet away, his fingers bruising his hips as his eyes focused on the dirt and grass.  He remembers the sprinklers.  It makes him smile, calms him for a moment.

“Just don’t wanna lose you…” Mickey trails off as he turns to meet Ian’s gaze, “again.”

“But you won’t.”

“Yeah, I know that, but it sometimes it feels like I will.”  Mickey swipes his thumb across his bottom lip, before continuing.  He wasn’t built to express himself, so he needs to constantly gather and re-gather the parts of himself that tell him it’s okay to proceed, piecing them temporarily together before they break again.  “When you were going through all that shit, I felt helpless, like I was failing you.  At one point I thought you felt the same.  I was so fucked up in the head, not really knowing what to do with all these…feelings.”

“Mick, you don’t have to – “

“Yes, I do,” Mickey cuts Ian off.  He closes his eyes for a moment, seeing Terry’s face behind his eyelids, his face in a snarl and silently threatening him with weakness if he allowed himself to feel.  _To love._   He gets scared for a minute, his mouth becoming dry as a vision of his mother’s body is suddenly replaced with Ian’s.  _They just end up in the dirt like your mother._ He nearly stops breathing, opening his eyes wide.  He turns to look at Ian, and it’s right then it hits him.  “I wasn’t taught to love,” he finally says.

Ian scoots closer to Mickey and places a hand on his thigh.  “Yet you learned,” he responds, “and I’m still here.”  Mickey’s only spoken to Ian once about his mother’s death and how it affected him.  In fact, he barely went into detail, but Ian was good like that.  He filled in his blanks and completed his sentences when needed.  He dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s.  Completed him.  Mickey feels the knots in his chest loosen, and suddenly it doesn’t hurt to breathe anymore.

“Ian, I – “

“I know,” Ian cuts Mickey off, “I always did.  You’ve showed me and that’s enough.”  Mickey feels the tension completely leave his chest.  He loves Ian with every fiber in his body, and despite not saying it aloud, at least he’s shown him and continues to show him.  Ian grabs his hand the way he did in the hospital a few months ago, and gives it an assuring squeeze.  “Whenever you’re ready.  I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

They sit in comfortable silence in the dugout for a while after that, staring out at the baseball patch.  Mickey knows he’ll no longer have to piece together those parts he gathers each time he feels the need to express himself.  He knows ‘I love you’ will be said when the time is right and Ian will still be there.  The things he does for Ian is more than enough and he feels strong for more than a minute now.

And when he falls asleep at night, Ian’s chest pressed into his shoulders, he no longer has the dreams.    

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to the song, "Wasn't Taught to Love," by Purple Ferdinand. The title is a line from the song. It's such a Mickey appropriate song, and I highly recommend listening to it. As I said earlier, this started out with my headcanon from the dugout scene spoiler. I expressed before that I feel like this would be the place Mickey tells Ian he loves him, whether it's the actual words or in his own way. I took that, and kind of flipped it on it's head, having Ian say it first. I also threw in a back story I thought up, explaining why it's so hard for Mickey to express how he feels. Of course it's known Terry's a homophobic, abusive father, but I also took that further, and kind of explored his mother's death and how that could have also been a factor. I decided to not have Mickey say it back, because I felt like he wouldn't have been ready right then and it would have felt forced, but Ian also knows he loves him through the hings he does for him, and that's enough. He knows he'll say it at his own time. Well, I hope this didn't suck, and thanks for reading! :)))


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